About an hour ago, Nancy Pelosi was elected House Democratic Leader by the overwhelming margin of 150-43. This is a crushing, more than 3-1 defeat for her Blue Dog challengers. It’s even a bigger margin than Dick Gephardt’s post-1994 victory of 150-58. No matter how much press attention Blue Dogs got with their whining, it didn’t get them many votes.

There was a closer and more contentious vote for best Halloween costume in the 5 year old division in my hometown a few weeks ago. Can we now please ignore these political incompetents? And could they now start acting like Democrats?

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2010-11-17 15:42:512010-11-17 15:42:51Can We Give Them The Attention They Now Deserve

Representive Patrick McHenry tweeted that the congressional GOP gave this news a standing ovation. I love the smell of false bravado in the morning. Pelosi built a majority once before, and she can do it again.

I admit, I did a little dance, but I was pretty sure this was how it was going to go down. The Blue Dogs lost by running against the president and Pelosi, so the remaining members of the caucus weren’t going to listen to them.

Ousting Pelosi because so many Blue Dogs lost didn’t seem like a very good idea. Love her or hate her (overall, I’m pretty neutral, but I think she did a good job as Speaker), she was one of the few Democrats who consistently put up a fight. Such a rare quality (among Democrats) should not be lightly tossed aside.

Arguing that Minority Leader is a poor fit for her (as the NYTimes did), seemed ridiculous. Now, should the Democrats regain control of the House in 2012 (wishful thinking), she will be the obvious choice to be Speaker again. Would that have been true if she’d been ousted now?

Unfortunately, the same habit of routinely re-electing the same leaders over and over again means Stenny Hoyer will still be the no. 2 Democrat. It would have been nice if he’d been challenged and beaten.

Carl Hulse writes this today in the Times:

Many of the House Democrats who went down to defeat this month were moderates with ties to the speaker.

Is that supposed to imply that the Blue Dogs lost because of their ties to Pelosi? Jeebus, Carl, welcome to Wonderland.

So, which is it, is Pelosi the far-left ideologue, or the centrist with the support of moderates? I just heard Shuler say that the vote was about giving moderates a voice.

Two term Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), as anything other than a protest candidate against Nancy Pelosi, was a preposterous candidate to lead the smaller, more liberal House Democratic caucus. And it’s not my understanding that he did anything to canvass for votes. So it’s a bad sign for Nancy Pelosi that 43 members of the caucus voted for the guy. That’s almost a quarter of the caucus. If a serious challenger had opposed her, it would have been a tough race.

–Josh Marshall

As they’re pointing out over at the GOS, Nancy’s win was by a better margin than Dick Gephardt’s 1994 win, so YMMV.

Marshall’s analysis is seriously flawed by the fact that either Heath Shuler actually was a serious challenger or there was no one who actually could be a serious challenger who thought that Pelosi needed to go.

I’m not even sure what Marshall is getting at here. 150-43 means that Pelosi got over 3/4 of the vote available to her. Shuler got about 22% of the vote. That’s a stomping, even if that 22% is making a “protest vote” and wasn’t really “serious” about it.

Fox/Politico/AP/etc Headline: Liberal Nancy Pelosi Narrowly Avoids End Of Political Career In Close Vote.

omfg!!

Check this from Josh Marshall:

Bad Sign for Pelosi

Two term Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), as anything other than a protest candidate against Nancy Pelosi, was a preposterous candidate to lead the smaller, more liberal House Democratic caucus. And it’s not my understanding that he did anything to canvass for votes. So it’s a bad sign for Nancy Pelosi that 43 members of the caucus voted for the guy. That’s almost a quarter of the caucus. If a serious challenger had opposed her, it would have been a tough race.

Careful John, between this and your rant on the white house earlier, people will start mistaking you for the professional left, maybe even a firebagger. Well except for your affinity for Tunch – he’s clearly one of the well-fed oligarchy.

@Suck It Up!: Josh still half-dreams of being part of The Village — a better VIllage, maybe, but one with all the insider-y elements we so despise. To maintain this hope, he buys into a certain percentage of the standard DC take.

What’s going to be more interesting is the actual vote for Speaker of the House on the floor, which happens soon after the new Members are sworn in IIRC. And for those Demo’s who don’t vote for Pelosi, I’m not sure who they’re allowed to vote for. It’ll be worth a good laugh if nothing else if some of them vote for Boehner.

The problem isn’t the Blue Dogs. It’s the fact the conservatives so dominate the public discussion via Fox News, radio, print media, think tanks, talking head shows on other cable networks, etc. that the already conservative nature of people in Blue Dog districts has shifted that much more to the right and their constituents distrust of their Congress critters is high, so it makes an “anti-government agenda” that much easier to convince people about.

If people in Blue Dog districts started wondering why the government isn’t doing more to invest in schools, for example, rather than thinking we spend too much on schools and teacher salaries because teachers, like other government workers, are just lazy bums, we’d then start seeing a shift in both Blue Dog voting patterns and Democratic fortunes.

The New York Post and New York Daily news are money losers for Murdoch, as well as the fact the Washington Times has never made money for Rev. Moon, nor has the American Spectator ever made a profit for Mellon-Scaife.

As long as they have a way to influence the political discussion in this country and can get their tax cuts, losing a few million in publishing doesn’t matter; it’s probably a tax write-off for them anyway.

Unfortunately there are no left-wing billionaires. Any left-wing media start-up has to survive on its own, which is very hard and usually doesn’t last long enough to have an impact.

Go Nancy Pelosi. Give ’em hell. I for one, am soooo glad that good sense prevailed..and No, it matters not one arse what the republicans, msm, or blue dogs write,think or express.
I admire your courage Nancy. Why? Because not one of them could do or achieve what you have achieved. All these guys do is talk, whinge, complain. and go on talk shows for their 5 minutes of fame. Sorry to say but most of them are a waste of space.

Honestly Josh Marshall can go fuck himself, he’s still posting those worthless Rassmussen polls 2 weeks after the election. Really any liberal who thinks that Pelosi was the problem with this election should just give it up and fellate Republicans for the rest of their worthless lives. The idea that this was a “bad sign” for Pelosi is plain stupid.

TPM became a far worse site during the run of this election, it’s like Drudge for chickenshit progressives.

Who the hell are all these people anyway? Who gives a royal flush what Josh thinks.What Josh thinks makes no difference to the world at large, anyway.Think about it, Josh is always,always responding to what Has taken place, but never really gives a productive solution to any forward progression. Right about now simply pooped out with the ‘voices’.Thank God their names won’t make the history books with their vacuous daily offerings.

Honestly Josh Marshall can go fuck himself, he’s still posting those worthless Rassmussen polls 2 weeks after the election. Really any liberal who thinks that Pelosi was the problem with this election should just give it up and fellate Republicans for the rest of their worthless lives. The idea that this was a “bad sign” for Pelosi is plain stupid.

Marshall has become rather horrid over the past few years, and today’s example is just the latest in the parade of psuedo-Village inanity. Let’s take a trip down Memory Lane to earlier this summer when the McChrystal brouhaha was in full swing. Remember when Marshall penned this piece of obtuse nonsense:

And yet, as I said a few moments ago, I’m not sure I thought he had it in him. But he did. I’ve learned something.

and then followed it up with this even greater turd of logic:

A number of you have written in to ask what the hell I was saying or what I meant. So I thought I’d expand briefly on what I said.
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First, and maybe this goes without saying, but I’m not sure I meant anything. Many people read with the idea that everything someone writes is not just — hopefully — accurate and honest but also aimed at some end — to signal something or to have some particular effect. But that’s not always the case and probably less so with the way I write than many others. It sounds a little airy and soft to me to say I’m writing what I ‘feel’. It’s probably better to say that I’m trying to capture my immediate and honest perception of the situation without giving any particular attention to what it means or what conclusions to draw from it.
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So with all that throat-clearing, what did I mean?
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I guess I’d say this. It’s not that I don’t think Obama’s tough or a strong leader or decisive or whatever adjective you want to use. Having watched Obama as president for going on two years, I’ve found remarkable his ability to ignore the chatter, the pundits and the polls and stick to whatever his plan is. But I’ve also gotten used to seeing that when crises come or key gut-check moments arise his tendency is to try to conciliate the situation. Not duck it; that’s not what I mean. I mean find some new vantage point to come at the situation from which you look at it again and see that it’s not really just a plain yes or no, that there’s some more complexity and give in the situation. And you can find some creative way to address all the relevant concerns. I just haven’t seen President Obama throw down a lot of gauntlets or, to put it harshly, cut the baby in half.
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So when I woke up this morning I still couldn’t quite see how President Obama could not fire McChrystal. But I also couldn’t quite imagine him doing it.
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But he did. Showed me a different side of him. And what I really couldn’t have imagined was that he found a way not just to acquit himself honorably and protect the office but actually enhance his prestige and standing.

And then, of course, there was this classic from the failed car bomb in Times Square that happened back in May:

When news first broke yesterday evening I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and in eyeshot of several top administration officials. So when my iPhone pinged me about the situation I was started monitoring it closely, not simply as a news story, but far more because my kids were at home only about 20 blocks from where it was all happening.
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I watched the administration folks to get a sense of how seriously I should be taking it.

I understand the desire to have someone new. I think many politicians stay around far too long and voluntary retirement should be held up as a virtue.

I could support someone new, even if it meant replacing Pelosi, if a strong case could be made that her replacement would be an improvement (something Shuler would not be). But the reasons given for wanting her gone, weren’t good enough, in my mind, to justify replacing her.

At least Pelosi has a spine that would show up on X-rays. Meanwhile over in the Senate that stellar leader, the most hated man in Nevada (fortunately the Republicans nominated a woman), Crusher Reid, will continue his weanie parade.

I’m still shaking my head over Nevada. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person than Sharron Angle, who may not be as hated as Harry Reid, but is so dumb and so wacko that she made Reid’s re-election possible.

After Sue Lowden offered her chicken-for-surgery plan, I thought she would have made a poor candidate. But in retrospect, I think she would have recovered enough to beat Reid, whereas Angle, what the hell can you say about Angle?

And Angle’s defeat may not be the most delicious of all, what with Joe Miller up there in Alaska. No one deserved to lose more than Miller. (Too bad it had to be to Murkowski.) Foremost on Miller’s mind today? What’s he going to do with those drapes he ordered (after the primary) for his Senate office. Oh, boooo hooo.

The fact that McCain got 173 electoral votes meant that Obama’s so-called ‘victory’ was actually a sign of failure, and this after an entire two years of campaigning.

If he wants his party to be able to move on and work more effectively together, Obama should resign in humble acknowledgement that after 8 years of George W. Bush, he could muster no more than a 52.9 to 45.7 popular vote victory over McCain.

How many praises for Pelosi would you be singing if she had to rally every single member of her caucus to pass every single bill?

Both had roughly the same percentage of the chamber (58-60%), the difference was that Pelosi could tell most of the Blue Dogs to go fuck themselves and still pass bills while Reid needed everyone from Sanders to Nelson to sign off on a bill plus the odd Republican or two before he could get anything done.

Reid did pretty damn good considering how broken the Senate is.

Right-wingers may only be interested in power, but they understand how to work the bureaucracy to get it.

Left-wingers want good governance but seem utterly uninterested in or incapable of understanding the difficulties it entails. (and yes, some of that commitment to good government makes the task harder…)

I’m sorry, lol, you’re just not going to get me to like, admire, or support Harry Reid. If you do, that’s fine, but I don’t and I’m not going to. If he were gone, do I think the Democrats would choose a better leader? Probably not. They have a real affinity for wishy-washy leaders in the Senate (see Tom Daschle), which hasn’t always been the case (see LBJ).

And my dislike of Reid is hardly unusual; he seems to be genuinely disliked in his own state by most people of all political stripes. Sharron Angle was probably the only person he could beat. I’d rather mourn the loss of a worthwhile Senator — Russ Feingold.

TPM called this “a bad sign for Pelosi”. Maybe they were being snarky?

No, Josh was being deadly serious. Although he started out doing serious journalism and deserves praise for what he did to push back against social security privatization (and for trying to get Democrats to seize a winning argument on taxes before the 2010 elections), he’s becoming more and more like a Villager every day.